• KINGFISHER NEWSLETTER 22ND JANUARY 2012
• KINGFISHER NEWSLETTER 22ND MAY 2011 -REVIEW 2010/11-

KINGFISHER NEWS UPDATE 22ND JANUARY 2012

GOOD FISHING CONTINUES BUT TOO MANY BOATS ARE LIEING IDLE ON THE MOORINGS!!

Dear All,

The good fishing that we have been experiencing for quite a while continued last week but unfortunately too many days saw boats sitting on their moorings. This time last year we had at least four boats fishing every day but this year is a very different story and what a shame it is as we are having such good fishing.

The weather is much the same as the previous week with hot clear days and the wind blowing from the north. All is calm as far as security goes with no incidents or reports of any goings on.

The Casino Tournament came to an end on 15th January and it turned out to be a very tightly contested affair! Unreel who had quite a comfortable lead after the first day was pushed to the wire by Tarka and managed to hang on to first place by just a couple of kilos! Ol jogi came in third and Alleycat fourth to complete the top four positions. There were a total of 26 marlin and 65 sailfish caught between15 boats. All in all it was a very successful and well run tournament. Kingfishers entrants, Snark and Neptune finished 5th and 9th respectively with both boats catching striped marlin on the second day. Snark was fished by Bas and Edwin Kanters and Adi, while Neptunes team was Herald Van Ieperen and Edward Ebbers. Con Jooste had a very good day on Eclare with a striped marlin and a sailfish caught on fly. Con fought the striped marlin for over two hours before getting it in range of the tag pole. Snowgoose fishing with Wilfred Van Laarhven and Roland Roy had a manic day with 10 sailfish.

On the 16th none of our boats found marlin but Con reached a milestone on Eclare when he caught his 100th sailfish on fly. All but 14 of these were caught in Kenyan waters and the majority on Kingfisher boats. The highlights of this feat were undoubtedly when he caught 28 in 5 days in 2008 and also the sailfish which he hunted for all day to complete his “Grand Slam” on fly in 2010. Well done Con.

On the 17th Neptune, fishing with our good friends from Belgium Alfons ,Rudi and Georges had a good day with a black and a blue marlin and some bait fish. Eclare had another good day fly fishing with the Jooste family. This time it was Cons brother Nic and his wife Angela who got in on the action with Angela catching her first sailfish on fly and Nic getting 4 to finish on 5 on fly for the day!

Neptune got a striped marlin and 2 sailfish on the 18th for the Werner Wirtz group . Eclare fishing with Herald and Edward had 11 sailfish while Snowgoose had 5 and Tina 1.

On the 19th Eclare was our only boat that caught a marlin with a stripey as well as three sailfish. Neptune,Snowgoose and Snark had 3, 4 and 6 sailfish respectively.

Tina, fishing with Wilfred and Roland had a very good day on the 20th tagging a nice black marlin of 100 + kgs and 5 sailfish.Eclare who was out with Peter Hoffman and co added yet another marlin to Peters over all tally when they tagged and released a striped marlin as well as 3 sailfish. Snowgoose had another day with 10 sailfish, this time fishing with the Wirz group. .

Only Neptune,Snowgoose and Snark were out on the 21st and Neptune had the most successful day with 16 sailfish. They caught the majority of these fish just outside the Watamu “mlango”(entrance). Snowgoose and Snark fished off Malindi where a lot of fish had been seen on previous days but it was slower today with Snowgoose catching two sailfish and Snark just some small fish.

Snowgoose had a brilliant day today catching 1 black marlin,2 striped marlin and 6 sailfish to record another “Grand Slam.” They were fishing with loyal clients Herbert and Monica Lewald who have been fishing with us for many years now. Neptune fishing with Richard Segers and Arie Theunissen had 8 sailfish.

That’s it from us here for another week.

Take care,

Adrian

KINGFISHER NEWS UPDATE 22ND MAY 2011-SEASON REVIEW 2010/11-

WE TAKE A LOOK AT THE UP’S AND DOWNS OF 2010\11 SEASON AND LOOK TOWARDS 2011\12.

Dear All,

All is well here in Malindi and like the rest of the world we did not blow up and disappear yesterday!!

Some of you may be wondering why there haven’t been any fishing reports for well over a month now. Well basically fishing has come to a bit of a standstill here and we haven’t had a charter since the 6th May. There are two boats sitting on the mooring raring to go but there just aren’t the people around. To make it even worse the weather is ideal for fishing. Although it has been raining it does not rain for long and the days are calm. Reports from a few dinghies that are commercial fishing would suggest that there are some big yellowfin on the banks as well as the odd black marlin and the usual kingfish and wahoo. Normally May is a very windy and wet month and that is why hotels close up and boats stop fishing. However, this month and in fact for the last four years, we have experienced weather that is more associated with March than May. Looking out of Ocean Sports two days ago the sea was flat calm and the notoriously savage ‘’mlango’’didn’t have a ripple on it let alone a breaker! Hotels haven’t had to board up the windows, which is what normally happens at this time of year. Why this change in weather is happening nobody really knows and whether it will revert to how it was is another question. We are hoping that the wind isn’t going to come later on in July\August when bookings start again!

We may not be fishing but needless to say work has not stopped. Neptune, Eclare and Tina are still in dry dock with the former being stripped to a bare shell. We hope to install the new engines in the next two weeks and then everything else will go back in around them. Neptune should look very sleek and go like a rocket this season. Eclare is very nearly ready and should go back into the water within the next three weeks. She has had a hull and inside re spray and is looking good. Once Eclare is back in, Snowgoose will come out for a bit of attention. Most of the crew are on a well earned break and will be back soon fully charged for another season.

Snowgoose and Snark fished quite a number of days at the end of April and beginning of May. Most days saw them come back with at least one red flag. Snowgoose, fishing with Mr and Mrs Percival caught a 40 kg sailfish on the 23rd April. A number of giant trevally were tagged and released over the two week period as well as an assortment of other game fish species. Snark has seven days booked in June and we are hoping that she will find some fish out there. June can be a very good black marlin month so fingers crossed.

We have a few days booked for July and August but considering what good fishing can be had, over these two months we would hope for a few more. September\October once again is looking like a very quiet period. We have introduced some packages over this period to try and encourage more of you to come. Information can be found on the Kingfisher Villas web site – http://fishandsafarikenya.com/kingfishervillas HOME .HTM or on our website www.kenyasportfishing.com .

We also want to encourage more jigging\popping enthusiasts to come over this period, as we feel it is an ideal time for these methods and more and more anglers want to jig or pop.

November is looking a bit healthier but we still have quite a few days available. December is very quite, apart from a couple of boats at the beginning of the month. We still have availability over the high season of January\February\March but bookings are starting to come in. If you are looking to come over the high season I would suggest that you get your bookings in ASAP.

Now that the season is officially over it gives us a chance to look back at the up’s and downs of what was without a doubt a roller coaster of a season. After a slow start in August the season never really picked up too much momentum, not compared to the two previous seasons anyway. The sailfish run wasn’t bad but again there were no where near the amount of fish we saw in 2008\2009 and 2009\10. Marlin figures are way down on the two season’s with the top boats just hitting fifty, where as the season before saw two boats reach the century mark. Having said that we are comparing it to two exceptional seasons and if you look at the figures for the last fifteen years this season would definitely be in the top half. February which is normally our number one month, produced some very difficult fishing mainly due to currents going the wrong way and dirty water etc, etc. Like the season before early January was brilliant for stripies but this year the small blues did not appear. The first two weeks of March was once again a very exciting time with some big fish being seen and caught. Unreel had a beautiful black marlin of 860 lbs which equals the biggest black boated in Kenya and Tega had a 600 lb blue later in the month. Whilst on the subject of big fish Eclare tagged and released a very big black of 600 lbs plus in February and just two days before that they lost an even bigger fish in the Malindi Billfish Tournament after five hours. A number of black marlin between the 400 – 500 lb range were caught this season. In fact most of the blacks caught were good fish of over 300 lbs and it was rare to see a small black. Neptune was once again our top marlin and sailfish boat this season with 48 and 355 respectively. I should think she will be in the top three overall in the country for marlin and she will once again be the top sailfish boat. Snowgoose and Eclare did very well on marlin with 38 and 31 while Tina had an exceptional sailfish season.

Malachite was not exceptionally busy last season and we are hoping that this season she will do more days doing what she is supposed to do, inshore fishing and shallow water jigging etc. She has been fitted with an echo sounder and has a hand held GPS. Inshore fishing has always been something we have wanted to perfect, ever since we got Malachite but it has been a bit of a struggle in finding the right areas close to home. We shall persevere however!

We were pleased to see a few more yellowfin tuna around this season. In early September large schools of fish between 20 to 30 kgs appeared off Malindi and boats were catching up to 10 a day. The canyons off Watamu then became home to large numbers of school size yellowfin. However at one time it became quite an art to get any of these fish in whole. As soon as one hooked up you could just about guarantee the fish being taken by a shark. Whether it was a bull, a bronze whaler or a spinner the tuna would be nailed. Quite a few shark were landed, especially if the tuna was on a rapala. Talking of rapalas’s we had a very exciting day on the canyons in September on Snark’s first day fishing of the season. It was just meant to be a test run for a few hours but we ended up staying out the whole day as it was so active. We lost a marlin on a rapala and then got one which was also on a rapala and got a load of tuna and wahoo. That was my first marlin on a rapala in twelve years of fishing!

Most other species numbers were on par with the season before apart from kingfish which were much more abundant this season than last. It was interesting to see that like the season before large numbers of wahoo appeared on the banks\canyons in mid March. They moved in as the monsoon was changing and the weather was really calm and then as soon as the wind picked up they disappeared.

Our boats participated in a number of tournaments this year and although we had a slow start it all came right in the end with some exceptional results. Snark, fishing with Guido van de Steen and Herald van Iperen took second place in the Casino Malindi Tournament which was held on the 15th and 16th January. They ended up with 2 black marlin and 1 sailfish over the two days.

Snark, which most of you will know is one of the slowest boats around showed that speed isn’t everything by winning the prestigious Fly 540 sponsored Watamu Festival on the 5th and 6th March. Fishing amongst a field of 22 boats Andy Atkins, myself and Adi managed a stripey and a sailfish on the first day and then a sailfish on the second day which was enough to sneak in first.

A few days later, Neptune made it an excellent week for us by winning the Friends of Kenya tournament. Held out of Hemingways resort the Friends of Kenya is a very popular and well run tournament and for Rick Le Monnier, Don Lafferty and Andy de Mare to win it was a very good effort indeed.

The last tournament our boats participated in was the Penn Challenge which is organized by the Fishing Dutchmen. Not surprisingly it was made up of mainly Dutch and a few Belgian fishermen. A total of 13 boats took part with Snark finishing as the second best boat and Snowgoose third.

All in all the 2010\11 season was a very busy and successful one for us. We could have done with a few more fish but we can’t control that unfortunately. Our skippers, crew, mechanics and the rest of the staff worked extremely hard throughout the season to ensure that everything went as much to plan as possible. We hope that this coming season will be another busy one and that we will see many of you back here again.

Take care,

Adrian